Slow collada export on Blender

[Tyrian Slade]

Good morning, meshers!

I've been playing around with mesh in blender, and if I make my models smooth (using subsurb), it takes well over half an hour to export my meshes.  I'm modelling organics;  full animal models.  While my basic meshes are pretty low vert, once I smooth them enough that you can't see the polygons, I quickly get up to 50k vertices or more.  Is there a way to make the models smooth without adding so many new vertices?  Or is there a way to speed up blender's export?

Thanks,

Tyrian

[arton Rotaru]

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Modeling/Meshes/Smoothing

[Ashasekayi Ra]

50, 000 vertices? That is extremely high. When making models for a game environment, you'll have to be more aggressive in balancing visual quality and low polys. If you place the edges in the proper places you can still get a "relatively" smooth shape without using too many triangles/vertices.  For example, you wouldn't just click subsurf and keep going. You'd have to optimize that model, remove wasteful edge loops and tweak the shape. This process takes time to learn and would be near impossible to explain in a forum post.

Jason Walsh has a great modeling training series that goes into how to build and optimize models. Just stop short of adding the final subsurf steps (for rendering) in his examples, and you'd be good to go. I *think* around chapter 8 he discusses optimizing, and he deals with an organic model in chapter 9.

http://www.youtube.com/user/cannedmushrooms#g/c/2BA5BDF79FF50122

You may find this article on game art helpful as well: http://wiki.polycount.com/PolygonCount

[Nacy Nightfire]

"

http://www.youtube.com/user/cannedmushrooms#g/c/2B​A5BDF79FF50122

You may find this article on game art helpful as well: http://wiki.polycount.com/PolygonCount"

 

Good stuff Ashasekayi!  That wiki.polycount article was expecially helpful, thank you.

[Rusalka Writer]

Forget you ever found the Subsurf button and find the Set Smooth button as fast as you can.

[Nacy Nightfire]

How does the "set smooth" button compare to the smoothing function of the SL mesh import screen?  Does it matter which one uses?

[Rusalka Writer]

Well, the Blender one makes a poly mesh gratifyingly smooth at a reasonable poly count. Experiment with it and I think you'll like it.

[Chodai Yoshikawa]

Hi Tyrian

I assume as its slow you are using blender 2.49b?    Try using 2.5 for all your mesh modelling. The COLLADA exporter is much faster in that.   If the Lindens fix a problem  ( https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/CTS-660 ) they have with the mesh importer it is also ready for rigging as well.    Blender 2.59 will be released in the next few days or so.

 

[Ashasekayi Ra]

---

Nacy Nightfire wrote:

How does the "set smooth" button compare to the smoothing function of the SL mesh import screen?  Does it matter which one uses?

---

Well, they are two different animals yet related on the surface. Set smooth uses shading to give the appearance of a smoother surface based on the rotation of the vertex normals per face. However, the sub surf modifier makes the model appear smoother because of added geometry. You surely want to use set smooth when you need a smooth model. There are ways to use sub surf with low poly modeling but you have to understand how to remove the edge loops you don't need while still maintaining a decent shape. And well, it isn't the easiest thing to catch on to. But, once you do, it isn't that painful. It just takes some time. But seriously, when doing a game model, you definitely shouldn't just click sub surf and leave it when doing the final model. It will be much heavier than it needs to be,

[Chodai Yoshikawa]

And on top of those two options there is the intermediate option of using the Edge Split Modifier.   This can smooth based on angled between faces and/or those edges marked "sharp" in the edit mode.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.5/Manual/Modeling/Meshes/Smoothing

[Drongle McMahon]

"How does the "set smooth" button compare to the smoothing function of the SL mesh import screen? "

The smoothing in the import screen does not smooth across UV seams or edges between materials*. The Blender one does (unless you tell it not to with edge-split).

*at lest the last time I tried it.

[Nacy Nightfire]

Thanks everyone for the answer to the smoothing question/options